Ducks In A Row: Stain Or Paint?
by Miki Saxon
If you read me often you won’t be surprised to learn that I love culture. I believe in the power of culture. I believe that good culture is the difference between great companies and the rest.
Most importantly, I know that if it’s going to succeed culture must be stain not paint.
Unfortunately, many companies use culture paint, believing they can pass it off as culture stain.
The difference is obvious, just as stain is absorbed by wood, culture stain is absorbed into the very fiber of an organization affecting everybody’s thoughts and actions.
And just as paint covers a surface masking its imperfections, culture paint sits on the surface where it is paid lip-service and its effects are grounded in convenience.
In great cultures the CEO enables ideas and desires to percolate up from many quarters to become part of the culture.
In others companies, CEOs only include them to make people feel good; they don’t really buy into them and the result is culture paint. As with real paint, culture paint hides the imperfections, dry rot and structural weaknesses.
Today’s employees have a deep distrust of paint and an abiding desire for stain.
And employees always vote on culture with their feet.
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Image credit: ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr
September 2nd, 2011 at 1:16 am
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